What did the young get for their critical outpouring of support? Though most of his youthful backers would be hesitant to admit it, the President has betrayed them on three issues of great importance to their wallets and sympathies: health care reform, the federal budget and gay rights.

As the first year of Obama's administration draws to a close, the gap between promise and policy is astonishing, and all the more so considering how critical the young were for his victory. Early primary wins in Iowa and South Carolina owed much to his massive support from voters under 30; in the former state he carried them by a 5-to-1 margin.

People of faith are an important part of this nation's history and its future. I could see myself supporting people of faith such as Mitt Romney or Jerry Brown. I even know people who voted for Barack Obama despite his membership in and regular attendance of a radical hate-mongering church. But nutty religious ideas cannot be allowed to override common sense and the Constitution in setting public policy. Huckabee led the region in pardons and commutations, apparently taking the Bible's message of forgiveness to mean he should put dangerous criminals back on the streets.

Huckabee's economic views are a similarly twisted interpretation of the Bible. He is a big-government leftist, apparently taking the Bible's message of charity not to mean that individuals should be charitable to each other, but that a redistributive big government directed by folksy former pastors should tax some to support others. For the record, Jesus was not a Communist.

Huckabee is probably a really nice guy and would probably make a great pastor of a local church. But someone of such twisted faith and limited intellect should never be allowed near the levers of power.

One angle missing from the story, I think, is what has caused the rise of right-wing pseudo-journalists. I believe the answer is that traditional journalists have left a huge void by failing to cover stories that don't align with their institutional biases. Stories like ACORN, Van Jones, NEA propaganda all were largely or completely ignored by traditional media until entertainers, commentators, or bloggers exposed and spread them. I'd add the belated and minimal coverage of ClimateGate.

If the MSM did its job and "spoke truth to power" even when those in power are Democrats, there wouldn't be such a vacuum for right-wing partisans to fill.

If you rely on the lavishly remunerated "climate correspondents" of the big newspapers and networks, you'll know nothing about the Climate Research Unit scandals - just the business-as-usual drivel about Boston being underwater by 2011. Indeed, even when a prominent media warm-monger addresses the issue, the newspaper prefers to reprint a month-old column predating the scandal. If you follow online analysis from obscure websites on the fringes of the map, you'll know what's going on. If you go to the convenience store and buy today's newspaper, you won't. That's the problem.

If anyone needs newspapers, it ought to be for stories like this. If there were no impending epocalypse, then "climate science" would be a relatively obscure field, as it was up to a generation ago. Now it produces celebrity scientists living high off the hog of billions in grants. They thus have a vested interest in maintaining the planet's-gonna-fry line. So what do the media do? Instead of exposing the thesis to rigorous journalistic examination, they stage fluffy green stunts, run soft-focus "living green" features with Hollywood "activists", and at a time of massive staff cutbacks in every other department create the positions of specialist "climate correspondent" and "environmental reporter" and fill them with sycophantic promoters of the Big Scare to the point that, as Dr Mann coos approvingly to The New York Times, "you've taken the words out of my mouth".

W.C. Varones originally posted about the new Barclays Black Card here. Well my wife got the same offer in the mail yesterday and I was just curious to find out a little more about it before I drop $500 on a credit card. so I gave them a call, twice.

First Call after being on hold for 10 minutes:

NL - "Hi Dottie, can you explain to me how the luxury gifts work?" Dottie - "Hi, the luxury gifts are gifts that you get because you are a member of the card. They are luxury items from the top vendors in the world."NL - "Can you name some of the vendors for me?"Dottie - "No I don't have that information."NL - "Well, Dottie, you can see how it might be considered a scam if you don't know what the gifts are before signing up don't you think?"Dottie - "It definitely isn't a scam."NL - "So I'm going to pay $500 for something you just can't tell me what it is?"Dottie - "Please hold" - [Puts me on hold and I finally hang up]

Second Call:

NL - "Hi Debbie, I'm one of the beautiful people who have been chosen for membership with your exclusive card. How are you today?"Debbie - "Fine sir, would you like to sign up for the card?"NL - "I'd love to but I want to get more of an idea of what I am getting. Regarding the concierge service, is that for anywhere in the world?"Debbie - "Yes sir, it's a wonderful service that fulfills of all your concierge needs."NL - "That's sounds excellent. So say I'm in Amsterdam and I need some female companionship for the evening, is that something the concierge could help me with?"Debbie - "YOU'LL HAVE TO ASK THEM!"NL - "But that's the thing, that's why I am calling you to find out. Nevermind, so how about the luxury items, what are they?Debbie - [same schpeal]NL - "But if you can't tell me what the items are how can I determine if it is worthwhile? After all what you might call a luxury item might be different than I call a luxury item. For example, I consider caviar, well Bulgarian at least, a luxury item while you might consider a can of premium tuna from the Stop and Shop a luxury item, no?Debbie - "I don't think so!"

At which point I ended the call because I had nothing more snobbly clever to say.

Authorities cited a number of reasons supporting the conclusion that Sparkman killed himself.

For instance, there was no evidence that Sparkman had struggled with anyone. There were no defensive wounds on his body and no trauma such as a blow to the head, authorities said.

Tests ruled out any theory that he was drugged and unconscious when he was tied to the tree, making the lack of signs of a struggle more significant.

[...]

Authorities say they don't think there was any single event that triggered Sparkman to take his own life, but rather a combination of problems. He had significant debt and didn't have a full-time job, Rudzinski said.

Sparkman, a native of Florida, had moved to Laurel County to work with the Boy Scouts of America. In addition to working part-time for the census, he was a substitute teacher.

He had gotten a degree to teach math but had not been hired full-time.

In addition to the insurance considerations, Sparkman might have been trying to spare his family from thinking he killed himself, Rudzinski said, though he left no note so there is no way to know exactly what he was thinking.

I was on the 45 from Union Street to the gold show at the Jukebox Marriott. It was about 10:35 am on Saturday 11/21, and we were stopped in Chinatown on Stockton Street. The doors were closing after people got off the bus, when this guy behind me jumped up and sprinted for the door. It was so unusual and obviously premeditated that he hadn't gotten up earlier that my first thought was that he was a purse-snatcher running off with someone's bag.

His true purpose became obvious when he pretended to get caught in the door, then started screaming and making a scene. I guess he was hoping the bus would pull away so he could pretend to be injured by being dragged, but since the bus wasn't moving, he had to settle for pretending to be injured by getting his jacket stuck in the door.

If that incompetent hack of a District Attorney Kamala Harris gave a shit about the city, she'd start prosecuting frauds like this before they catch on even further. I'd offer to testify, but she won't even prosecute hit & runs with injuries, so she certainly won't prosecute Muni fraud.

So the best I can do is make this guy famous, and maybe this will help Muni deny his claim.

That's him sitting there, patiently waiting for the Muni accident investigator to come give him his lottery payday.

If you know anyone in the Muni accident investigation group, please forward this post.

Hm, who were these people gathering in Chicago yesterday, 11/22/09? Oh! they're the "End the Fed" Protesters! Let's take a closer look.

Nice Skyline.

These signs are getting a workout!

I hope this sequel's as good as the original was. I mean, at least the script of the original was pretty darn amazing. The reality of it was pretty good, too, for the first 137 years or so. But I wasn't so fond of the original's 3rd act, to be honest.

They apparently went shopping along State Street.

Passersby like Walter Payton were a little confused at first, but took the literature anyway.

Some were so confused they didn't even take the literature.

K9s got it, though.

It's a fact that in the middle of 1963, JFK was starting to develop a plan to eliminate the Fed Reserve. I like this T-shirt. I'm just sayin'....

As the song goes, "Reflections of, the way life used to be."

Sunday in the Park

Some of the signs sat down to listen to the speakers.

A stop at the Board of Trade before moving on to the Chicago Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank for the protest's grand finale.

What? The policeman says, "You can't go there. They're shooting a film over there, and if you disrupted them with a lot of noise, it'd be a big hassle for everyone. They'd have to come back tomorrow to complete their shoot. The city would have to block off the streets on a work day, etc…" To which one protester responded, "Well, it'd be more work for you guys, at least. Right?" Laughter ensued.

Sure enough, the film includes old-school Chicago Police Cars, circa late 1980's maybe. Eventually, the lawman allowed the protesters to go in front of the Fed, and hold a "silent protest". So, the protesters engaged in a Silent Protest, which is exactly how the Fed wants it.

Some of the speakers took the opportunity to remind the protestors of some historically important quotes, which helped bring into focus what we are really facing.

1) "Lenin was surely right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." -John Maynard Keynes

2) "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." -Thomas Jefferson

3) In1832, when President Andrew Jackson confronted the Second Bank of the United States, he said, "Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul the charter, I shall ruin 10,000 families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin. Should I let you go on, you will ruin 50,000 families, and that would be my sin." -Andrew Jackson

And I'll add one myself:

4) "This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas Jefferson

"Soviet" is the Russian word for "council". In the period leading up to the 1917 Revolution, there were Unions that were largely behind the movement towards that Marxist/ Communist Revolution. There were even "Unions of Unions", (kinda like the AFL-CIO). Meetings of these Unions' elected delegates were called "Soviets". There were multiple Soviets, the "St. Petersburg Soviet of Worker's Delegates" being the most significant because Lenin and Trotsky were members of it. In 1905, new Unions were springing up all over Russia, including the "Peasants' Union" and the "Union of Russian People". The Soviets and other Unions won concessions from the Tsar in the 1905 Revolution. That produced some temporary stability, but it ultimately proved to be too little too late. After the 1917 Communist Revolution, in order to reflect the importance of the Soviets to the Marxist government he had helped create, Lenin decided to include the word "Soviet" in the name of the newly Tsar-less worker's paradise. Hence, the 2nd 'S' in "USSR".

Conceptually at least, the USSR was partly designed to be what one might call a Union-run government.

Jump cut to the United States, 2009.

When ownership wants to spend less on labor, the Unions will fight that plan. We have Unions to protect workers from being abused by ownership. That's all well and good. But this means that the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), whose membership consists of Government employees, is essentially protecting its workers from…what?…the ownership of the government! The problem is; that's the people! The SEIU is a powerful Union that is, by the very nature of its existence, protecting it's workers from the people. This means that whenever the people decide, through their representatives, that they want to spend less money on a given government program, the SEIU kicks its influence into overdrive. It mounts nasty protests (insert ACORN beating here), and it threatens whatever politicians it has funded with revocation of support. They even put up/fund their own new candidates for office when their "bought" politicians start talking about government spending cuts. This is currently happening in Oregon and all over California. The SEIU (and its close affiliate ACORN) uses its enormous power to ensure the constant growth of government. The relationship between the SEIU and the Government is thus a feedback loop that only produces ever-escalating taxes and ever-escalating spending over time.

Conceptually at least, the US was designed to be what one might call a citizen-run government. But when the SEIU blocks the will of the people from being implemented, shouldn't we conclude that the US is now a de-facto Union-run government?

For instance, the majority of American Citizens do not want it, yet Congress is preparing to pass the Health Reform bill. Is it a coincidence that this bill would greatly benefit the SEIU?

President Obama has basically pledged his life's work to the SEIU. When historians look back at our own time in America's history, will they see any such parallels? Are the SEIU and ACORN America's "Soviets"?

"Everything I have read about Mr. Obama points right to the fact that he is a Muslim. And that is the agenda of what Muslim is all about. It's about anti-American, it's about anti-Christianity," West said.

It looks like the greatest scientific hoax of the century has been exposed.

Number of mentions among the dozens of stories on the front page of CNN.Com: 0. For Pete's sake, even MSNBC is front-paging it, though they only link a tepid WaPo story that doesn't mention the most damning stuff (which you can and should read at Mish).

UPDATE: Here's CNN finally, four days after the story broke. And they relegate the story to the backwater "Tech" section on CNN.com. I wonder if that's where they've posted all the credulous global warming stories over the years.

The “worst financial crisis in generations” happened after “almost a decade, certainly eight years, of basic neglect of basic public goods, in health care, in education, in public infrastructure, in how we use energy,” Geithner said.

Really? The financial crisis had nothing to do with the leverage and the lending practices of banks that were under Geithner's supervision as head of the New York Fed? The whole financial crisis was a direct result of George W. Bush's spending too little on education and energy?

I guess Geithner's been spending so much time with Obama that he's absorbed the "we inherited this mess; nothing is our fault" theme. But to actually try to persuade people that the financial crisis has more to do with Bush's education spending than the Wall Street banks under Geithner's regulation? The guy is cracked.

CA looked for a way to return to "territory status" due to budget problems. Michigan is in similar trouble, and Illinois and New York are right behind them. Could it be any more obvious that wherever Unions are dominant, they end up collapsing a state's finances? If the Federal Government starts to bail out states, we'll be that much closer to "National Socialist" status (not meant as an inflammatory reference to WWII Germany), as opposed to a "Federal" system. The word "Federal" will mean nothing once we start bailing out individual states and allowing Washington, DC to run them, to gobble them up like vultures gobble rotting flesh. From a WSJ OpEd 11/13/09.

"We're facing a cliff in 2011 when stimulus dollars run out," said Mitchell Bean, director of the Michigan House Fiscal Agency. "There is not an end in sight, even in recovery."

As of July 2009, California's budget shortfall was 49.3% of its general funds. States have considered drastic options to fill such gaps.

"I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy," said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. "I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status."

David Horowitzknows radical American Communists better than any other political commentator you'll see out there. Why? Because he used to be one of them. Then he converted and adopted a more reasonable political stance. This is a very interesting interview with him, wherein he comments on the tactics and goals of the radical Communist left, of which Obama is clearly one. He knows these people. He knows what they're doing, and how they're doing it. Listen to him, because his former ideological brothers are now in charge, and they're very busy converting our nation into something it was never meant to be. Here's the interview in 2 parts.

Obama is making up imaginary Congressional Districts and "saving" jobs in them! From ACB news:

abcnews.go.com —In Arizona's 9th Congressional District, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the website set up by the Obama Administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says. But there is no 9th district in Arizona. And that isn't the only district listed on that site that doesn't exist.

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: For those concerned about stimulus spending, the General Services Administration sends word tonight that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site.

The new Web site promises to give taxpayers more information about where their money is going than the current version of the site.

Is it becoming clearer to everybody that that stimulus bill Obama insisted be passed immediately in order to prevent unemployment from going over 9% is really just a Political Patronage Slush Fund?

Women in their 40s should stop routinely having annual mammograms and older women should cut back to one scheduled exam every other year, an influential federal task force has concluded, challenging the use of one of the most common medical tests.

[...]

"Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and these idiots want to do away with it," said Daniel B. Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School. "It's crazy -- unethical, really."

Now, now, Dr. Kopans. You're probably just a shill for the radiology special interest group. You've been ripping off the people for too long. It's about time we stop the rampant over-prescription of mammograms!

And on a totally unrelated note, it would be a great cost control!

Some questioned whether the new guidelines were designed more to control spending than to improve health. In addition to prompting fewer doctors to recommend mammograms to their patients, they worried that the move would prompt insurers to deny coverage for many mammograms.

The new recommendations took on added significance because under health-care reform legislation pending in Congress, the conclusions of the 16-member task force would set standards for what preventive services insurance plans would be required to cover at little or no cost.

But it's not about rationing! It's about saving women from temporary anxiety over false positives. And if other women have to die of breast cancer to prevent that anxiety, well, that's a small price to pay.

Or would you rather just watch this "movie" below featuring Andy Stern, the head of the SEIU, in his own words? Would you be more interested if you found out that Andy Stern visits the White House more frequently than anyone else? In this video, he says,

"'Worker of the world unite'? It's not just a slogan anymore. It's the way we're gonna have to do our work."

He also says, "We're trying to use the power of persuasion. And if that doesn't work, we're going to use the persuasion of power."

That one was pretty good. But is this a better SEIU movie? Ooh, doesn't he look angry? All good Communists are, I guess.

CNSNews.com) – As a candidate for president, Barack Obama decried the financial toll that the Iraq war was taking on the economy, but Obama's proposed spending on welfare through 2010 will eclipse Bush's war spending by more than $260 billion.

"Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned," then-Sen. Barack Obama told a Charleston, W.V., crowd in March 2008. "This is creating problems in our fragile economy. And that kind of debt also places an unfair burden on our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay it."

President Obama's welfare spending will reach $888 billion in a single fiscal year--2010--more than the Bush administration spent on war in Iraq from the first "shock and awe" attack in 2003 until Bush left office in January.

Obama's spending proposals call for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This will lead to a spending total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for low-income Americans and those at 200 percent of the poverty level, or $44,000 for a family of four. Among that total, $7.5 trillion will be federal money and $2.8 trillion will be federally mandated state expenditures.

In that same West Virginia speech last year, Obama said, "When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you're paying a price for this war."

The Heritage study says, "Applying that same standard to means-tested welfare spending reveals that welfare will cost each household $560 per month in 2009 and $638 per month in 2010."

The welfare reform package of 1996 only targeted one program, which was Aid for Families with Dependent Children, pushing work requirements for recipients to encourage them to get off the rolls. There are still 70 different welfare programs spread across 14 different federal agencies, said Robert Rector, senior research fellow in domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, who co-wrote the study.

"The average person says I thought we ended welfare. Well, it's a good thing we ended it, otherwise we'd be spending some real money," Rector joked while speaking about the report on Tuesday. "Reform was grossly oversold by Clinton and the Republicans. It reformed one program out of 70. Medicaid, public housing, the Earned Income Tax Credit were not reformed."

According to his White House budget proposal, President Barack Obama will increase annual federal welfare spending by one-third, from $522.4 billion to $697 billion in his first fiscal year. Adjusted for inflation, the combined two-year increase of $263 billion is greater than any increase in welfare spending in history.

By 2014, annual spending on welfare programs will reach $1 trillion for the fiscal year.

“One in seven in total federal and state dollars now goes to welfare. But this is a completely unknown story,” Rector said. “This is not being reported. No one knows Obama is spending $10 trillion on welfare.”

Welfare spending has taken its toll on the federal debt. Since the beginning of the “war on poverty,” $15.9 trillion has been spent on welfare programs. The total cost of every war in American history, starting with the American Revolution, is $6.4 trillion when adjusted for inflation.

Welfare has been the fastest growing part of the federal government’s spending, increasing by 292 percent from 1989 to 2008. That’s compared to Social Security and Medicare, which grew 213 percent, the study says.

Adjusted for inflation, welfare is 5 percent of the gross domestic product today. It was only 1.2 percent of GDP in 1965, the report says. Also, over the next decade, $1.5 trillion in welfare benefits will be paid to low-skilled immigrants.

Still, high levels of poverty are reflected by the U.S. Census Bureau because the bureau counts only 4 percent of the total welfare spending as income when it calculates poverty. Thus, most discussions on poverty begin on the virtual premise that welfare does not exist, the study says.

“None of the $800 billion being spent is counted as income, so the Census comes back and they say, ‘Oh my goodness, we have 40 million poor people. We need to spend more money,’” Rector explained. “That is a game the taxpayer can never win.”

Changing how the money is spent could go a long way in achieving better results, the study says.

“Annual means tested welfare spending is more than sufficient to eliminate poverty in the United States,” the study reports. “If welfare spending were converted into case benefits, the sum would be nearly four times the amount needed to raise the income of all poor families above the official poverty line.”

It's been 9 months since our last Del Mar CRE update. Catching up, this one's a doozy. Some of the places will look familiar; that's because they are the same places that are still vacant more than a year after we first posted about them.

Remember Measure G, "The Garden," wherein Del Mar residents were asked to approve yet another strip mall? Well, here it is a year after voters approved it:

It turns out the developers didn't actually want to own another strip mall. They just wanted to build one and flip it to some greater fool. So now they are going to leave a vacant lot until someone pays them up front.

Which brings us to our next strip mall disaster, "4sale-lease.com," also known as 1201 Camino Del Mar. Remember this picture from October 2008? We commented on the open slots.

Here's what it looks like today:

A look at the catchily-named 4sale-lease.com web site reveals the problem. They are trying to get $4.00 - $4.80 per square foot, when one mile east on High Bluff and El Camino Real there is brand new, Class A office space with much better freeway accessibility going in the $1s and $2s.

And this sign from our October 2008 update is still there. Good thing they used all-weather paint and varnish!

Same booth still for rent. Know any lap-dancers who are looking?

And now we get to Del Mar Plaza. I didn't have time to go into the plaza (and there's that restraining order thing); the following pics are just the vacant stores on the ground level along Camino Del Mar.

Remember the Plaza's trick about painting over the windows to make it look like there's not really a vacant store there? It's back. This was the Medici Gallery, which sold art and furniture from estates.

The one on the left was a swimwear or sunglass shop that has moved upstairs (cheaper rent?). The one on the right was Java Kai, a poorly managed coffee shop. Signs indicate it's going to be some new cafe.

Java Kai again.

To top off this update, let's turn away from commercial and have a look at a Del Mar residential monstrosity. Some idiot bought the property at 155 27th Street (as a vacant lot or as a tear-down; I'm not sure which) for $2.75 million in 2005. They decided that what would fit right in at a Southern California beach was a house that looked like a Christmas-tree-themed church.

It went on the market for $6.995 million on 9/11, and has since been reduced to $5.87 million. All that for 3 bedrooms in a Christmas tree church. What kind of person has $6 million to blow, doesn't need more than 3 bedrooms, and wants to live in a Christmas tree church?